samsara55

IRANIAN MILITARY SPOKESMAN SAYS ISRAELI AND AMERICAN OFFICIALS AND MILITARY PERSONNEL WON'T BE SAFE IN 'RESORTS AND TOURIST CENTRES AROUND THE WORLD' AFTER IRANIAN OFFICIALS KILLED IN STRIKES - REPORTS

Reading a Polish writer the other day, I've understood why Russians are so hated in Europe. It's not just the direct military threat or cultural differences. We are a testament to the death of a particular vision of Europe that could have been, the Belle Époque Europe. This cutesy peripheral Germanic civilization of cuckoo clock makers, beer festivals and pretty gingerbread houses. The soapy Central European peasant poetry of muh meadows and valleys. All the small-time Slavic nationalisms focused on languages, dresses, dances and cuisines but not messianic megaprojects and continental teleology, having grown tired of anything so grand in wars of religion; all benefiting from the shared European position on top of the colonized humanity, but for the most part blissfully militarily relaxed. Tidy duchies, cosmopolitan cities and dwarf kingdoms, protectorates and leagues, preening aristocracy and well-to-do trade families, the ViBraNcY and DivErSitY of it all, where every NGMI tradition has a corner and a market and an unalienable right to exist in perpetuity. They really thought – hoped – that this parochial patchwork bullshit, this Grand Budapest Hotel of nations, can work. Russians, Germans and Anglos, who have long been too big for this stifling scenario, decided otherwise. And then they decided otherwise AGAIN. After WWI, this gingerbread Europe was dealt a mortal wound, but that wasn't immediately understood. After WWII, it was bombed to shreds, raped and split in halves. That seemed to be it. The Western side was licking its wounds and rebuilding its less threatening gimmicks under the aegis of unfathomably rich and benevolent American Empire, but the dream was effectively over; the patchwork was gone one way or another, every nation was destined to remain a subservient part of a bloc with rigid hierarchy, the peoples of Europe too small, too tired and too dependent on the outside world to ever be truly sovereign. Then, however, even Russians grew disgusted with the job of propping up the Marxist experiment, and in a few years the Union crumbled, in a “victory” the US celebrated as their own. NATO and the EU expanded, Russia was busy with the economic collapse/AIDS epidemic/war in Chechnya/banditism and desperate to sell energy for cheap, and it became possible to hope once again that there will be a revival: the European Longhouse of Nations, a bloc *for* Europe, allied but not subservient to the US, coordinated by Brussels but not subjugated by Germany or France (or, God Forbid, Russia), where every Estonia and Czech Republic and Bulgaria and Portugal have a valid voice. An achingly beautiful dream. Sike! Russia is back! Russia isn't collapsing, Russia is not changing, Russia wasn't invited and cannot be invited, Russia has not acknowledged that History is Over, it's happy to buy your chocolate or cars but it's got a new set of inane slogans to spill blood for on your border. OK, time to put the old monster to rest, we've got muh GDP, now for sure, but then… you discover that your GDP is toilet paper and you're fucking WEAK, you wouldn't be able to organize an army or spin up the production of materiel, your productive economy was a wrapper for imported energy, you're lucky you've got UKRAINE on your side, in fact. And your union… it's been revealed to be half a malicious bureaucratic parasite abusing its mission and half a bluff, a wrapper for American hegemony, you're not able to resist or even negotiate any terms when Americans decide their newest Ponzi scheme is at risk and more could be milked out of you. And your beautiful sovereign cultures… they're DEAD, STERILE, replaced with MCU T-shirts and Karim (20 ans) smoking weed in your filth-covered streets (he's there to ensure GDP goes up, except he's somehow tax-negative). And your reputable brands and unique crafts… largely got bought out by Americans and Asians, or lost to the global competition. What remains is pure prestige hollowed out by termites, paper rights, empty churches. You can't even build your own social networks, either on the national or pan-European level, you're squatting on American digital infrastructure like some bums… though this might be already too abstract for an average Eurocel. What is not abstract is the sense that the gingerbread era will never return, and that idea Europe has in some substantial metaphysical sense *irrevocably failed*. This is still the world of Empires, indeed it's more a world of Empires than at the peak of idealized Europe. Russia is a profoundly shitty, obsolete, irrational, *weak* Empire, and yet it's enough to give Eurocels a reality check that induces psychosis and genocidal rage. What stands beyond Russia—China and the US, veritable civilization-states with missions that extend through the light cone into deep time and an ability to find use for every atom you're made of—is too big for the Euro-mind to contemplate. Now, Europeans will either form a super-state of their own (and not another compromised one), or accept they're broken and deserve nothing more than the status of playthings for larger forces. Now it's an easy choice for political NPCs from Chihuahua statelets with their unbreakable smug, racially supremacist optimism: just go with the flow, cheerlead for the bigger neighbor to “contribute”, yeah yeah we'll fight Russia, we'll fight China, we accept the US tariffs, we're not asking questions of where we stand in 10 or 20 years, Avengers assemble!… I imagine it's painful for a sincere nationalist. And Russia is the proximate cause of the pain.

Publicly traded companies in Britain must have, or “explain to the regulator” why they do not have: - A minimum of 40% women on their board of directors - A woman CEO, chairman of the board, CFO and/or Senior Independent Director - A board member who is an ethnic minority Why is anybody confused about why so few companies want to list here and so few promising startups scale up here? Would you agree to put people in charge of your company on the basis of their sex or race in order to meet a diversity quota? These rules were brought in by the Conservative Party in 2022, BTW.

NEW: Top US allies turning toward China while blaming Trump for global instability, support building closer ties to China due to belief that US role as a global superpower is fading. -Politico

The American Empire dies here. Yes, it will be for the best (in terms of restoring our republic). No, it will not be easy on us nor will it necessarily lead to a better outcome globally. We're in between a rock-and-a-hard-place. I just wish our leaders had been wiser since 1991.

I remain deeply curious about the long-term viability of Beijing's New Model Imperialism. What exactly happens when the third world countries can't pay, won't adhere to the predatory contract, nationalize the properties? Does China send in the troops?

Trump’s upcoming Beijing visit is turning into a diplomatic nightmare for Xi Jinping. Xi originally invited Trump hoping it would look like a major diplomatic victory. Instead, it’s becoming a humiliation. Three signals make this obvious. First, Marco Rubio is coming with Trump, the same Rubio Beijing sanctioned and banned from entering China for criticizing Xinjiang and Hong Kong. Second, Trump is refusing the usual grand tour. Unlike Macron or Scholz, he will only stay in Beijing and skip visiting other Chinese cities, making the trip short and transactional rather than friendly. Third, reports say the U.S. may approve $14 billion in arms sales to Taiwan immediately after the meeting, possibly the largest package ever. In other words, Trump is framing the trip as business, not friendship. What Xi hoped would look like tribute now risks looking like a diplomatic slap in the face.

Japan will defeat China again if another military conflict arises. Here is Why. Many people assume that if China and Japan ever went to war, China would win. After all, China has more people. China’s GDP, territory, military size, and weapons inventory all appear far larger. But war has never been a simple hardware contest. The real determinant is “software”—governance, organization, discipline, and corruption. Japan consistently ranks among the world’s least corrupt governments, with efficient institutions and high public trust. China’s system faces a serious corruption problem, which severely erodes military effectiveness. History already showed this once. In 1894, Qing China had far larger resources than Japan, yet corruption hollowed out its military. The Beiyang Fleet collapsed, and China suffered a crushing defeat. And if hardware alone decides wars, how did 1950s China with primitive equipment fight the United States in Korea? How did Vietnam resist the far more powerful U.S. military? Hardware can be impressive. But corruption turns power into a paper tiger.

Shocking video from Quebec shows an elderly convenience store worker being struck from behind and assaulted by a large group of young migrants.

Iran is about China, but not in the childish “cut off one supplier and Beijing collapses” sense. It is about engineered scarcity. If this thesis is right, Washington is not stumbling into Middle Eastern chaos. It is accepting, and perhaps courting, a world of higher energy prices, higher fertilizer prices, disrupted shipping, and recessionary pressure because the United States is one of the few powers positioned to survive that environment better than its rivals. Yes, the Gulf Arabs will resent it. Yes, Europe will hate it. Yes, global growth will get smashed and Russia will benefit at the margin. None of that disproves the logic. The point is relative leverage, not universal prosperity. If Hormuz is compromised and Iranian production is damaged, Asia’s import-dependent economies become more desperate for substitute barrels, maritime protection, and reliable trade corridors. Energy security stops being an abstract macro variable and becomes a weapon. So does shipping security. So does fertilizer. So does food. That is where the real pressure on China comes in. Not because China cannot physically keep people alive on bare caloric minimums, but because regime stability is not built on subsistence rice. It is built on a population, especially an urban and coastal middle class, accustomed to rising living standards, protein consumption, consumer abundance, and the implicit promise that the Party can keep delivering all of it. Strip out reliable imports of feed, soy, meat inputs, and energy, and the issue is not mass starvation. The issue is degradation. Scarcity. Inflation. Friction. A slow reduction in the standard of life that underwrites consent. And in that world, food exporters and energy exporters hold the knife. The United States sits on both. Brazil matters too, but Brazil is not untouchable in a truly gloves-off contest. So the thesis is not that Iran is a sideshow. It is that Iran is the mechanism: the pressure point through which Washington can raise the cost of modern life for everyone, then exploit the fact that America remains one of the last major powers with the resource base to feed, fuel, and protect the system everyone else still depends on. That is why, under this view, the chaos is not a policy failure. It is the policy. Or, our ruling class is retarded and didn’t think this through at all. Coin toss.